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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Kpopalypse Nugu Alert Episode 10: The Solutions, Dramatics, Underdog

Kpopalypse returns yet again with more nugus to entertain you all! Read on and discover more k-pop nugus to enrich your life!
It's
the tenth episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! Wow, that means that there
are now more episodes of Nugu Alert than Star Wars! Who would have
thought that this series could actually last ten episodes? Certainly
not me - Nugu Alert isn't one of the more popular topics for Kpopalypse
in terms of hit rates or comments. Fortunately, I have high
determination levels to keep the series running plus not give a shit
what anyone thinks about it. Just as well for nugu fans! Let's get it
started and check out some nugu videos.

This episode of Kpopalypse
Nugu Alert is dedicated to freaky cheap-but-effective camera filters
and effects. When you're a group that's a little on the
poverty-stricken side, just the mere act of getting filmed by a camera
is enough to break the budget, there's no extra cash floating around for
much in the way of fancy-pants CGI, flashy box-making shenanigans or
visits to the auto rental shop to get some sports cars to pose in front
of. In these situations, the solution to keep the video
interesting-looking may well be to go up to the editor and say "hey, the
video is in the can but I've got to be honest, it looks kinda boring -
can you add some kind of cool image effect to this to spice it up?".
Let's have a look at some nugus and their video directors' creative
solutions to tart up their low budget productions.

The Solutions - Love You Dear

On the more popular end of the scale, The Solutions probably aren't that nugu, perhaps due to success in Korea or maybe just Eat Your Kimchi pimping them outa fair bit.
They actually seem to have a bit of a following, and you can tell by
the relatively high budget look of their video compared with what you'll
see later on in this post. However they're worthy of a spot on
Kpopalypse Nugu Alert anyway due to their choice of camera effects and
the fact that most k-pop fans reading this probably don't know them so
why the fuck not. You probably all know that trick that film directors
sometimes use where they physically move a camera away from a subject
while at the same time zooming in the lens as close as they can? The
resulting effect (and its opposite twin - moving the camera up close
while simultaneously zooming out) is one of disorientation as the
background warps around the subject, and it's often used in film to make
a vista in an outdoor scene seem more pronounced, or to show
disorientation - Alfred Hitchcock was the first person to use it in the
film "Vertigo" hence it's sometimes referred to as the "vertigo effect".

It's
a great effect when used in isolation to highlight a scene, but the
video director for The Solutions thought it would be a fantastic idea to
utilise this effect for nearly half of the entire goddamn video. The
song is actually pretty solid as far as generic pop-rockers go but the
visuals are something else - if you can make it through this entire
thing without feeling extreme motion sickness you're doing better than
me. By about the end of the second verse shit
does eventually stop moving around so fucking much but by then the
damage is done and you're probably well and truly talking on the
porcelain telephone.

YouTube views at time of writing: 15113

Notable attribute: erratic camera work bounces around even more than Martina's boobs in Eat Your Kimchi's FAPFAP series

Nugu Alert rating: low

Dramatics - You Win

Everybody loves Instagram, it's the social network that gave us the following life enhancements:

It
also gave the world great new photo filtering options, although they're
not exactly options in the true sense because if you use Instagram
you're kinda stuck with them
whether you like it or not. Or at least you're stuck with them between
3:15pm and 3:30pm every second full moon which is when the website is
actually running properly.

If it doesn't meet Hitomi Tanaka's lofty standards,
it doesn't meet mine, and that's why I don't have Instagram.
Fortunately for those who can't go a day without looking at photos of
things with filters on them, the video team behind Dramatics have gone
to great lengths to throw Instagram-style filtering across almost every
single shot in their MV. On top of that you get a cute little story
about a young Korean couple meeting and learning how to hold hands and
think pure thoughts. "You Win"
indeed! Unfortunately it's all a little bit too true to the Instagram
concept, with the song being about as frustratingly dull as when some
cute person you have a crush on posts continual photos of their meals
instead of selcas.

YouTube views at time of writing: 389

Notable
attribute: k-pop drama video dares to feature two of the only actors
left in South Korea who (probably) haven't had (much) plastic surgery
(lately)

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

Underdog - Zombie Run

It's
difficult to find a male idol-style group that doesn't have twenty
gazillions YouTube hits, especially given the international
fashionability of such things and the ever expanding fangirl race with
new spawnlings hatching every second, ready to sacrifice themselves at
the altar of oppa. The aptly-named Underdog seem to be in struggle-town
though, with their debut MV collecting only a thousand hits in its
first week of release. Even sadder is the fate of their teasers, which
barely scraped into double-digit territory:

For
once I actually feel like watching a teaser, if only just to make the
video editor feel like he didn't waste precious hours of his life making
them. So what happened to Underdog's hype machine? Sure, the song's
pretty bad especially with that ill-advised chorus chant that sounds
like a walrus with pneumonia, but it's not any worse than the last few
absurdly popular BigBang releases so it can't be the music's fault. I
guess their agency just doesn't have the right connections, but what
they certainly do have is some wild blur-shadow thing, some other
squiggly-lines-across-the-image thing, great colour-matching skills, and
groovy gift-shop face masks. The best detail of all is the
dressmaker's dummy inserted behind one scene for no goddamn reason,
maybe it's a prop or maybe the wardrobe department just forgot to remove
it, but either way it comes off looking less out-of-place than just
about everything else here. The video is worth a look because why the
hell not, and I promise you you'll laugh at the awkward stares from the
member with the overdone makeup and the massive freeze-dried emo rooster
hair. If nothing else at least watch the teasers and leave an
encouraging YouTube comment for their creator, the poor guy who made
them is probably on suicide watch and could use your emotional support.

YouTube views at time of writing: 1009

Notable
attribute: at 2:04 one guy gets left leg caught on a prickly weed and
keeps on dancing because he's a PRO with high determination levels to
"make it" in k-pop

Nugu Alert rating: off the chart

FINAL RANKINGS:

That's
it for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! I hope you enjoyed
these nugu videos, and thanks to all the folks who have been submitting
nugu suggestions! I often don't reply to those but I do read them all
so keep it up! Kpopalypse will return in the future with more nugus!